Category: News

Write A Song For Skultar, and You Could Die!

  • News
  • September 7, 2010

Frequent commenter and song-craftsman Russ Rogers tipped us off to a little contest he put together, and folks, it’ll slay you.

For those in-the-know (and those not…) Mark Wheatley and M.J. Butler have been toiling away at an homage to Conan and all things barbarian with their new project, Skultar the Unconquered! In viral barbarian fashion, Mark and M.J. decided on a great way to gain some much needed funding to get their bloody pet project off the ground (you did read Glenn’s article on just how much it costs to put out a book these days, did you not?). For various contributions to the project, you can get a slew of special prizes… ranging from exclusive behind the scene updates, signed Frankenstein Mobster comics, to the bigger prizes, like limited editions of the printed Skultar comic (with signed book plate!) to our personal favorite: being drawn into Skultar to be maimed, slaughtered, or otherwise killed… along with a signed death certificate and acknowledgment in the final book! Who doesn’t want to be vivisected in 4 colors by a master like Mark Wheatley? We thought so.

That brings us to Russ Rodgers, and the White Elephant Music Club! Starting today, everyone is welcome to enter the Skultar Sword and Sorcery Song Challenge! The rules are simple: Write a song, featuring lyrics about swords, sorcery, and other savage goodness. It can any genre, any style. Full band? Rock out. Solo acoustic? Folk it up. Bolivian flute and rap combo? The weirder the better. Write, record, and share your creation with the White Elephant Music Club on Facebook, and you’re entered. Want to increase your chances of winning? It’s simple: Mention Skultar in the lyrics! Sounds simple? We know. Want more points? Make some “conversion van quality” album art for your song. Submit a .jpg of your art with said song, and you’ll get some more bonus points. Want even more points? Record a music video for your song! Bam. More points. Want yet even more points, you grade grubber? Word is that if you promote your song and the contest on your own facebook / myspace / website / neighborhood juice bar… you’ll nab a bloody carcass full of bonus points! Judges for the contest will weigh your song-craft, bloody lyrical content, and add up your bonus points. The song’s are due September 24th, with the winner being announced September 30th.

For full details on the contest, do yourself a favor and click on over to the White Elephant Music Club page.

For more details on Skultar, and all of his bad-assery, click on over to his website before he smites you.

Now, all you rockin’ ComicMixers… plug that old Strat into your Marshall half stack. Hit that fuzz pedal and overdrive. Crank the volume to 11, and sing your heart out… before Skultar cuts it out from your girly chest.

hugo-1086825

2010 Hugo Awards Winners Announced

  • News
  • September 6, 2010

hugo-1086825Kudos and congratulations are in order for the winners of this year’s Hugo Awards.  Named for “Amazing Stories” founder, Hugo Gernsback, the Hugos were awarded at this year’s WorldCon (Aussiecon 4, in Melbourne, Australia) to celebrate fine contributions for the year’s top science fiction or fantasy works. So, without further adieu, let us present this year’s winners, and offer our congratulations!

And the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (presented by Dell Magazines): Seanan McGuire

We here at ComicMix congratulate all the winners above, and recommend you give a gander at their (now award winning!) work next time you get a touch of the wanderlust for the stars or sword.

The Point Radio: A DC History Lesson From Len Wein

DC’s rich history can best be explained by not only one of their oldest fans, but top creators. The man who gave us SWAMP THING (and much more), LEN WEIN shares a few 75th Anniversary Tales – plus LOCKE & KEY heads to TV.

And be sure to stay on The Point via iTunes - ComicMix, RSS, MyPodcast.Comor Podbean!

Follow us now on and !

Don’t forget that you can now enjoy THE POINT 24 hours a Day – 7 Days a week!. Updates on all parts of pop culture, special programming by some of your favorite personalities and the biggest variety of contemporary music on the net – plus there is a great round of new programs on the air including classic radio each night at 12mid (Eastern) on RETRO RADIO COMICMIX’s Mark Wheatley hitting the FREQUENCY every Saturday at 9pm and even the Editor-In-Chief of COMICMIX, Mike Gold, with his daily WEIRD SCENES and two full hours of insanity every Sunday (7pm ET) with WEIRD SOUNDS!

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN LIVE FOR FREE or go to GetThePointRadio for more including a connection for mobile phones including iPhone & Blackberrys.

 

 

Cleveland is Krypton– The True Birthplace of Superman

  • News
  • September 3, 2010

Tip of the hat to Anne Trubek at the Smithsonian online magazine for her nifty article on Cleveland, the true birthplace of Superman. For those not in the know, the myth of comicdom’s biggest hero began in suburban Cleveland. While many are familiar with the names Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, many don’t know much about their humble beginnings. Back in 1933, two sons of Jewish immigrants conceived the origins of the Man of Steel. Living in Glenville, minutes from the bustling city (as Trubek notes, Cleveland at the time was the fifth most populous city in the country!), these two funnies-addicted men built what would become perhaps the single most recognized icon in comic books.

However, the fine folks of Cleveland have done little in the way of promoting their city as the birthplace of the Last Son of Krypton. In fact, when Joanne Siegel wanted to donate her husband’s typewriter, among other artifacts, to the city, not a single Cleveland-ite stepped up to accept. The home of Joe Shuster was torn down. If not for the hard work of comic critic Michael Sangiacomo and comic/novel scribe Brad Meltzer, Siegel’s home might not even be standing today. With much of the home in disrepair, the remaining legacy of Siegel and Shuster was seemingly doomed, much like Krypton. Meltzer and Sangiacomo formed the Siegel and Shuster Society, and raised over 100,000 dollars to help restore the home to its former glory. But since then, not much else has been done. The now-restored home is still used as a residence, and Cleveland has done little in the way of homage to the men who gave us the world’s first superhero.

No need for us to rewrite Anne’s thoughts, though. Click on the link above, and follow the continuing Superman saga. We must say we agree wholeheartedly that the city of “King James” should be reclaimed for Kal-El.

What did Mark Waid REALLY say at the Harvey Awards? Listen for yourself!

  • News
  • September 3, 2010

It’s already become a bit legendary this week– the self-described “long vodka-fueled rant” that Mark Waid delivered as the keynote speech at the Harvey Awards. However, unless you were one of the two hundred or so people in the room, you didn’t actually hear his speech. You might have read the speech Mark intended to give, but Mark himself said he almost immediately went off his notes.

So what was actually said? And was there really booing from some audience members?

Now you can listen for yourself. After a brief intro by Scott Kurtz, we have the full speech from Mark Waid here, as caught by Phil Merkel.

And after you’ve heard it, discuss what he had to say about publishing, filesharing, and making a living in the future in the comments.

It’s An Action Packed Tuesday!

  • News
  • September 3, 2010

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

GERONIMO!!!!!!
Ready for a pulp action hero like no other?  Want your fill of high flyin’, explodin’ good ol’ fashion adventurin’ for the sake of adventurin’?? Then don’t miss the interview with writer John Morgan Neal, co creator of AYM GERONIMO AND THE POSTMODERN PIONEERS! Who is this Aym we speak of, you ask??  Why, click on the interview tab and find out!!

To paraphrase a classic pop song, the heart of pulp is still beatin’! The first Moonstone Monday might be over, but All Pulp continues to churn out the good word about pulp adventure! Look for several new reviews today, updates to the news section and more! Upcoming interviews will feature the likes of Wild Cat Books’ Publisher Ron Hanna, author B.C. Bell and AYM GERONIMO writer J. Morgan Neal!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2010

Government offices are closed all over the United States! Most likely, you are reading this from the comfort of your own home today because you have been given the day off in celebration of a national holiday!! Yes, that most fantastic of holidays…what? Labor Day?? No, although that’s really cool, too, we’re talking about the most awesome of days to be celebrated! That’s right, it’s finally come..The First Ever All Pulp….

As one of the leading Pulp Pushin’ Publishers of the modern era, Moonstone has made its mark by bringing Pulp type characters from all mediums back to life via comic books (Reviving ‘Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar’ and ‘Boston Blackie’ was INSPIRED) and pulp prose anthologies. Now Moonstone takes its devotion to Pulp to the next level with the ambitious project RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS!! Classic pulp characters, both iconic and unknown, live to adventure and action again in a line of comics coming from Moonstone! Don’t believe us? Then let’s name drop…The Black Bat…Ki-Gor…The Spider…Phantom Detective…I. V. Frost..and so much more! Written by some of the best known names in modern pulp and drawn by fantastic artists, classic Pulp heroes walk, run, fly, and fight again in Moonstone’s RETURN OF THE ORIGINALS! Check out our news, interviews, and other pages today throughout the day for all sorts of Moonstone goodness, including never before seen images!!!

SEPTEMBER 3, 2010

It was unveiled on this week’s edition of The Book Cave Podcast but the full details will be coming soon in a press release from Pro Se Productions. Veteran authors (and All Pulp contributors) Tommy Hancock, Derrick Ferguson and Barry Reese are teaming up on a shared universe project set in the fictional location of Sovereign City! The fellow to the left is Lazarus Gray, one of the denizens of the project. The image is a production sketch from artist Anthony Castrillo. Stay tuned for more.

Mark Waid’s speech and the Napsterization of comics

  • News
  • September 2, 2010

Mark Waid’s planned Harvey speech on copyright, piracy, digital distribution, and the like is now posted at CBR. Please note that this is his Platonic ideal speech, not what I heard in the room– as I recall it and he himself noted, the speech he gave was significantly, shall we say, rougher. Sadly, no one has posted an actual transcript or video yet, which is a shame as I think that may have been even more important. (And yes, I have a lead on a copy.)

A while back, I wrote about a meeting I had with DC Legal talking about comics piracy, and I talked about how comics were being Napsterized. In the light of Mark’s call to start a dialogue on these topics, I’d like to revisit that topic– sadly, five years on, the issues are still with us.

Seth Godin recently talked about what publishing should have learned from the music industry:

1) We have a fresh slate at HarperStudio. What’s your advice?

The huge opportunity for book publishers is to get unstuck. You’re not in the printing business. The life and death of trees is not your concern. You’re in the business of leveraging the big ideas authors have. There are a hundred ways to do that, yet book publishers obsess about just one or two of them. Here’s the news flash: that’s not what authors care about. Authors don’t care about units sold. They care about ideas spread. If you can help them do that, we’re delighted to share our profits with you. But one (broken) sales channel–bookstores–and one broken model (guaranteed sale of slow-to-market books) is not the way to get there. If you free yourself up enough to throw that out, you’ll figure out dozens of ways to leverage and spread and profit from ideas worth spreading.

2) If everything is free, how is anyone going to make any money?

First, the market and the internet don’t care if you make money. That’s important to say. You have no right to make money from every development in media, and the humility that comes from approaching the market that way matters. It’s not “how can the market make me money” it’s “how can I do things for this market.” Because generally, when you do something for an audience, they repay you. The Grateful Dead made plenty of money. Tom Peters makes many millions of dollars a year giving speeches, while books are a tiny fraction of that. Barack Obama used ideas to get elected, book royalties are just a nice side effect. There are doctors and consultants who profit from spreading ideas. Novelists and musicians can make money with bespoke work and appearances and interactions. And you know what? It’s entirely likely that many people in the chain WON’T make any money. That’s okay. That’s the way change works.

3) How do you think publishers and authors could work more productively together?

Publishing is far too focused on the pub day. The event of the publication. This is a tiny drip, perhaps the least important moment in a long timeline. As soon as publishers see themselves as marketers and agents and managers and developers of content, things change.

4) What’s the most important lesson the book publishing industry can learn from the music industry?

The market doesn’t care a whit about maintaining your industry. The lesson from Napster and iTunes is that there’s even MORE music than there was before. What got hurt was Tower and the guys in the suits and the unlimited budgets for groupies and drugs. The music will keep coming. Same thing is true with books. So you can decide to hassle your readers (oh, I mean your customers) and you can decide that a book on a Kindle SHOULD cost $15 because it replaces a $15 book, and if you do, we (the readers) will just walk away. Or, you could say, “if books on the Kindle were $1, perhaps we could create a vast audience of people who buy books like candy, all the time, and read more and don’t pirate stuff cause it’s convenient and cheap…” I’m a pessimist that the book industry will learn from music. How are you betting?

So let’s think about the state of the industries– where music’s been the last few years, and where comics could be heading.

Recession? Check.

Screwed up and weakened distribution channels? Check.

High studio costs? Check.

Nearly free, widespread distribution system that the fans use? Check.

Major industry execs and creators that are either clueless about the Internet, or are years late to the party? Check.

A newly empowered bunch of creators doing it themselves and distributing online? Check, check, check.

So is there a solution? Yes, but there are some big hurdles to overcome. Start discussing it in the comment threads, and we’ll be back in a bit with more.

The Snark Files: The Flash in a Marathon

  • News
  • September 2, 2010

Well, my loyal ComicMix fans, it seems you respond to me when I get snarky. So, I figure if Daniel Tosh can rip off Web Soup and be popular, why can’t I? Sure, I’m not standing in front of a green screen, making fun of YouTube clips, or filming it all in front of semi-drunk fans who thought they had tickets to the Daily Show… but hey, I can totally make off-hand comments when people put pictures in front of my face. Case in point? Everything the Source touts as being “Cryptic”. See example A and B. But I digress! On to today’s fun. We found this image thanks to the ‘Obvious Winner‘ blog, and couldn’t help ourselves.

  • Look what poor Wally West has to do now that Barry and the “Silver-Age Only” Justice Leaguers buried him in backups.*
  • Hey, no wonder Jim Parsons won that Emmy. He used his Flash costume to garner votes… that cad.
  • Sorry, all you Ethiopians, Kenyans, and Nigerians… y’all ain’t got nuthin’ on the Speed Force.
  • Actually, come to think of it, thanks to Flash: Rebirth, we don’t even know how the damned “Speed Force” works anymore. And when we called Mark Waid for clarification, he only tried to sell us a copy of Irredeemable.
  • Just to be a jerk about it, the Flash waited 3 hours, 32 minutes and 13 seconds after they fired the starting gun to begin running. He still won by 48 minutes.
  • Not pictured here, but who’s also running in the race in an attempt to stay fresh in readers’ minds? Max Mercury, Impulse, Kid Flash, Jesse Quick, and Wally’s one kid who isn’t Impulse…who no one will care about until he turns into a Rogue, which is bound to happen since he had his power siphoned off by his greedy sister. And he’s part Asian.
  • Flash Fact: running in 90-degree heat in a bright red costume with only his face exposed equals bugs in your teeth and metahuman-level BO.
  • We were sure this was Wally West, but after a careful look at the bright red suit and full-circle lightning belt, this is indeed Barry Allen. Turns out he thought this was another “Flash vs. Superman” charity race. Silly Barry, fun comics are for kids–from the 70s!
  • In accordance with his new M.O. of “causing all the trouble in Barry Allen’s life,” the original Reverse Flash is waiting at the 2-mile marker with a cup of water to give to Flash. Little does Flash know…the water is stale and lukewarm. Bwa ha ha ha!
  • Because he’s still not “with the times,” Flash was nearly laughed out of the marathon for using his original Walkman, loaded with a cassette of “We Built This City”.
  • Flash Fact 2: Barry uses Crisis on Infinite Secrets Antiperspirant (TM). Strong enough for a woman, but made for a boring relic, brought back because Geoff Johns can do no wrong.

Well, that ought to rile up some of you fine readers! Feel free to disagree in the comments below.

  • We know that the Justice League contains plenty of non-Silver Age leaguers right now. But trust us, Hal, Ollie, and Barry sat in a diner four years ago and decided Kyle Rayner, Wally West, Conner Hawke, and Roy Harper should take a break. It’s not like Hal, Ollie, and Barry had 20 or so years to gain a fan base.

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